of
intellectual, and therefore religious unity. Polytheism became
practically inconsistent with the Roman empire, and a tendency arose for
the introduction of some form of monotheism. Apart from the operations
of Reason, it is clear that the recognition by so many nations of one
emperor must soon be followed by the acknowledgment of one God. There is
a disposition to uniformity among people who are associated by a common
political bond. Moreover, the rivalries of a hundred priesthoods
imparted to polytheism an intrinsic weakness; but monotheism implies
centralization, an organized hierarchy, and therefore concentration of
power. The different interests and collisions of multitudinous forms of
religion sapped individual faith; a diffusion of practical atheism,
manifested by a total indifference to all ceremonies, except so far as
they were shows, was the result, the whole community falling into an
unbelieving and godless state. The form of superstition through which
the national mind had passed was essentially founded upon the
recognition of an incessant intervention of many divinities determining
human affairs; but such a faith became extinct by degrees among the
educated. How was it possible that human reason should deal otherwise
with all the contradictions and absurdities of a thousand indigenous and
imported deities, each asserting his inconsistent pretensions. A god who
in his native grove or temple has been paramount and unquestioned, sinks
into insignificance when he is brought into a crowd of compeers. In this
respect there is no difference between gods and men. Great cities are
great levellers of both. He who has stood forth in undue proportions in
the solitude of the country, sinks out of observation in the solitude of
a crowd.

[Sidenote: Roman philosophy.]

[Sidenote: Varro. Lucretius.]

[Sidenote: Cicero.]

The most superficial statement of philosophy among the Romans, if
philosophy it can be called, shows us how completely religious sentiment
was effaced. The presence of sceptical thought is seen in the
explanations of Terentius Varro, B.C. 110, that the anthropomorphic gods
are to be received as mere emblems of the forces of matter; and the
general tendency of the times may be gathered from the poem of
Lucretius: his recommendations that the mind should be emancipated from
the fear of the gods; his arguments against the immortality of the soul;
his setting forth Nature as the only God to be worshippe